on my belly, in the same Norse style as his wolf tattoo. It’s beautiful. The deer is alert, delicate, and elegant. I would even say vulnerable. Is that what he’s trying to tell me? That I’m vulnerable to him?
Mason stands behind me. I beam at him in the mirror.
“I don’t know what to say. It’s so beautiful, Mason. So much more than I was expecting.”
He puts his hands on my arms and looks at his handiwork. Admires the reflection of us together.
“It worked out better than I thought.”
“You never told me you could paint. All this time, watching me, you kept that little detail to yourself. Brat!”
“That’s because I can’t paint. You can paint. I just mess around.”
“We paint differently, that’s all. What you do is still painting. And I’m going preserve it.”
I reach for my cell phone, which was charging in the bathroom, and turn on the camera.
“Aren’t you afraid that naked pictures of you might end up on the internet?” Mason asks.
“Ha! I’ll post this picture myself if it comes to that. This isn’t pornography. It’s art. Hold still.”
I take the picture of our reflection in the mirror and then turn around to face him.
“Something this beautiful should be preserved.”
I reach up and grab both of his shoulders at the same time. Then I stand on my toes and kiss him, pulling him down to my height. Mason lets his hands fall to my ribs, kisses me back, and then presses his body against mine. His morning arousal is quick to return.
He grabs my waist and tightens, hoisting me onto the bathroom counter. His right hand slips between my legs. The hand he didn’t use to paint with.
His mouth is hungry for mine. I give him my lips as he fingers my cleft. He realizes very quickly that I’m already moist to the touch. His attention to detail excited me this entire time. I reach down blindly and grab for his length. I find it easily and stroke him, hardening Mason in my grip.
“You didn’t sign your work,” I whisper, biting my lower lip.
He smiles at me mischievously. I reach up and hold the sides of his face with my hand as he guides himself between my legs. The head of him teases my breach, coaxing the lips open. Mason throbs with eagerness, but then holds back for some reason.
His eyes lock with mine. I can’t help thinking that he’s more exposed to me now than ever before. The dark secret he carries is very close to the surface now. This is how it makes him feel. He wants me to know.
Mason is laying himself bare to me, expressing his feelings without saying anything at all, the moment before penetration. The moment before he loses himself inside me, when his mind stops thinking and his body takes over.
I pull his face forward and kiss him with abandon, smudging paint onto his face. Mason lifts me off the counter and I instinctively wrap my legs around his back, gripping his shoulders at the same time. Then, before I realize it, he’s plunged inside of me. I surround him, enveloping this attentive man, and take him completely.
Mason has lingered for almost seven days. We’ve lain with each other to distraction during that time, to our great and mutual pleasure, but this is something else. Something more dangerous and precarious. My heart is pounding.
The honesty of this feeling is setting off all kinds of alarms in my head. Alarms that are getting louder. Alarms that are desperate to be heard.
I ignore them all.
I could say the words that siphon Mason’s lust, like I did last night, and let my coven know I’m lying with a man again. I could, but I don’t. Still rebelling.
I keep kissing him instead. I can’t kiss him fast enough for some reason. Suddenly I want to swallow him whole. My lips are failing me. They aren’t doing what I want them to do, but that doesn’t stop me from trying.
I drive my fingers through his hair. I want to take away the pain Mason hides from me. The loneliness he felt before we met. I want to smother it from his heart and